


Loss Ficlet: & forever

by missclairebelle



Series: Loss (Ficlets) [28]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 10:19:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14952800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missclairebelle/pseuds/missclairebelle
Summary: Loss Jamie and Claire finally say "I do."





	Loss Ficlet: & forever

**Author's Note:**

> NSFW towards the end. :)

##  **& forever  
** **June 2018**

Although a Highlander in full regalia is always an impressive sight, it was not the sight of the tartan grazing the arches of Jamie’s knees at the end of the aisle that I would remember when thinking back on our wedding day.

It was the slight tremor in his hand, a flit of a wrist and tap on his thigh. 

It was the way his mouth twitched up at the corner and the ghost of words I could not make out on his lips.

It was the chorus of chairs scraping over stone as our guests stood. 

It was the rustle of dress clothes as they turned to look at _me_.  

It was the feeling of my peripheral vision fading away as I focused in on Jamie and _only_ Jamie. He was _not_ all I had _,_ but he was everything that made the rest of what I had come alive in a way I had never known to want.

It was the earthy scent of herbs ( _sage, rosemary, lavender_ ) floating towards me as the doors opened into the herb garden where I was marrying my best friend. A spicy cleanliness that was fresh and prickly in my nose.

It was the warm strip of Fraser plaid in my hand that bound the stems of my bouquet and absorbed the perspiration from my sweaty palms.

It was the black-center anemones with velvety-soft white petals, fat blush-pink and ivory cabbage roses, wild black grass with sharp tips and slippery edges, and white heather. I memorized each petal, retraining myself how to breathe, before the door opened into the room where I would say _I will, I do, always_.

It was the warmth of Jamie’s sure fingers when he took mine at the end of the short aisle, his tremor completely gone upon our first touch.  A whispered confession from his lips as fingers skimmed over my face.  ( _“I felt like I was going to fall down… seein’ ye. But not now._ ”)

It was the steady pressure of those fingers that kept me on my feet, the narrow trickle of sweat that streaked from the back of my right thigh and pooled behind my knee. A gentle tickle of a sensation that was just enough to recognize _this was really (finally) happening_.

It was the swell of something ( _a feeling akin to a sob but not even remotely close to anguish_ ) behind my breasts. His eyes kicked off a feeling that bloomed and expanded in my ribcage. The feeling –– a honeyed pink thing with vine-like tentacles –– wove itself like traffic in and out of my nerves. _The emotion in him, staring me down and painted midnight blue_ – awe, love, passion, _certainty_.

It was the careful assemblage of my dress. Louise’s quiet reassurances as she zipped me into it.  Geillis’ soft smile as she lifted layers and helped me into my shoes.  It was the way Louise said “ _just breathe_ ” when she raked her fingers through the loose curls at my back and pinned them _just so_.  

I had fallen in love with the dress knowing it was too expensive, too extravagant. Cheeks burning at the excess of it all, I had allowed myself to be taken in by a chorus of “ _yes_ ”es from Louise, Geillis, and Jenny. A designer whose name I stumbled over, but who Geillis identified with a familiarity like he was an old friend, had me absolutely bewitched. (“ _Zuhair Murad_ ,” _she said in a dreamy accent unlike her own_.)

Long, sheer sleeves skimmed my arms and lacy overlay crawled up my wrists in sparkling white vines.  The sheer bodice had such well-placed, shimmering appliques that I spent a solid five minutes just staring, wondering how it could fit _like this_ off the rack.  At the waist, though, it flared just slightly into a confection of flesh-toned silk organza. Layers upon layers of material with delicate filigree caught the light and absolutely shone.

I second guessed it only when I opened my credit card statement sitting across the table from Jamie on our monthly Sunday of bill paying. I slipped the statement across the table to him, a hole a mile wide in my gut.

Purchasing that dress was easily the least logical thing I had ever done.

When he picked up the bill I breathed, “ _It’s not too late to return it_ …”

Jamie’s eyes bulged only for a second, a sharp sound hissing through his teeth. Then he had shrugged and said, “ _Jenny sent me a text saying that I may no’ live past seeing ye walk down the aisle. And what a way for me to go, Sassenach_. _”_

I looked at him, not entirely convinced and my body stiffening.

Then he had _laughed_ : “ _I canna wait to see this dress that cost more than the ring._ ”

It was his phone call to me before the wedding. I had snuck away for a brief moment outside, my head tipped back and breathing in the cool early evening air. Without a greeting, he said, “If I dinna say it later, I need to say ye’re so verra beautiful today.  I’ll no’ ever forget the way ye look.”

I had protested, “You haven’t even seen me yet.”

I caught the slightest hitch of his breath as he responded, “I dinna need to have seen ye to ken that what I’ve said is true.”

It was the vows he said, each word spoken with reverence. It was as if he was discovering the sentiment behind them for the first time.

It was the words I said, things that did not require a script and that fell from me easily.

The words _we_ said.  Words that became sacred and scored on my memory. Like the spelling of my name or date of birth as we spoke them into existence.  

It was the way our vows became coated in salt as tears started to fall, dribbling over my lips and caught by his fingers. His voice _clear, even, intentional_ , his own tears pushed away by the back of his hand and rejected by a Scottish noise in his throat.

_Blood of my blood._

_Husband. Wife. The word “forever”_ _becoming bond that felt little different from thousands of moments that had come before._

It was a kiss that we had promised would be chaste in front of our friends and family. ( _Something to save for ourselves._ ) I inhaled, breathless in anticipation of his lips meeting mine.

And with “ _you may kiss your bride_ ,” Jamie _didn’t_.

At least not right away.  

Instead he lifted my hand, kissing my palm. The tenderness in his eyes, the softness of his breath on my hand made me fall impossibly more in love with him.

_His first act as my husband_.

Moving in for the _real moment_ , he placed my freshly-kissed palm over his heart.

His calm demeanor was betrayed by his heart. The machinations of a vital organ, held squarely in its rightful place inside of his chest by his thoracic cavity, was his tell.  A pumping, furious rhythm from adrenaline and love.

He was every word all at once – every noun, adjective, and verb. Every future, every past, my present.

The kiss was a shadow and a promise, and I sighed in anticipation of what was to come when we were alone.

When we walked back down the aisle and slipped away, he _really_ kissed me.  

It was the kiss promised before the wedding – just Claire, just Jamie.  His mouth was full of words that he had already spoken and some he did not say ( _did not need to say_ ). He poured them into me, accepting in return small whimpers, the hitch of my breath, and the release of all things.

With my hands anchored against the swell of his biceps, my head told me to _fall, fall, fall_. A broad hand, sure and warm through my dress, found my lower back and subtly urged my body to bow into his and to remain upright.

It was the way he said, “ _I know_ ,” when I mumbled his name, breaking apart with closed eyes.

_And oh Dear God_.  

It was like my thoughts were flowing directly into him when our foreheads rested together.

It was the way he said, “ _They’ll wait. It’s no’ their day_ ,” when after some minutes I worried about _the reception_ , _our guests_.  

We caught our breath together.

Despite the heady rush of emotion and the swell in my stained lips, I was thinking clearly.

This man. Oh, _this man_.  

This day, our day.

A moment, forever ours.

It was the way he entertained, in his typical Scots storyteller way –– broad gestures, hyperbole, and emphasis in unexpected places.  It was the way I caught him running his thumb over the new platinum band on his left ring finger and the way his eyes changed when the ring caught the candlelight.

It was the taste of our wedding dinner on his mouth.

It was the way he carefully twirled noodles on his fork, giving me bites with his hand suspended beneath the fork.  With a wry smile, a whisper: “Like feedin’ a bairn.”

“I never appreciated what it’d be like to eat _this_ wearing a wedding dress,” I confessed, feeling a little silly as he wiped a bit of sauce from my lower lip.

“Mmmm,” he said, licking the dribble of glossy, buttery sauce from his thumb. He looked down at the dress. “I appreciate that dress enough for the both of us.”

It was the way that even though we were married, a blush rioted in my cheeks.  Such a furious pink that I wondered if I would live the rest of my days going rosy by the utterly insane things he sometimes said to me.

It was the way he carefully touched the centerpiece on the table in front of us –– his finger passing through the flame of the candle and running along the circumference of a rose so swollen with the promise of summertime that it hung too low and almost too fragrant on its stem.

It was the way my tone-deaf love whispered along with the music when we danced.

It was a song I picked that he had only heard once. But he was still asking me to _come with me, my love, to the sea… the sea of love… I want to tell you how much I love you_.  

The bloody Scot had secretly memorized the words, despite having shown an almost chronic disinterest in choosing a song.

Our hands absorbed our heartbeats, pressed between the lengths of our bodies.

It was those things and more that imprinted on me.

The low, dying murmur of a party about to disperse separated us. I was in a small group talking about university, stomach aching from laughter. Jamie was with his uncles and godfather. In hand, a flask of something I would have been stupid to assume was anything other than whisky.

And then came the _goodbyes_ and the _thank yous_ , the genuine appreciation for the ones we loved coming to share our day.

The crowd thinned until only Geillis, Louise, Joe, John, and David remained in a corner, taking turns with a bottle of some sort of clear alcohol.

At the perimeter of the room, Jamie and I found each other.  He held me for a long time.

We did not need words, just the slow, even rhythm of two hearts beating.

“Sassenach.” It was soft enough that I could hardly hear him but breathy enough to lift a curl resting along my earlobe.  

“Huh?” We had been so _quiet_ , my head was full and foggy with candlelight and vows.

“Are ye about ready to get out of here?”  

His voice was loose from dry champagne and whisky, but not so loose as to have lost its intention.  The shiver of an ice-cold thrill sluiced down my back before catching on fire in a ring of orange flame that settled in the pit of my stomach. “Yes. _Please_.”

We stole cake from our own wedding ( _trophies of our escape on rented porcelain_ ) and laughed about the reactions our friends would have realizing we skipped out on the end of the reception.

In the room where we would spend our first night as _Mr. and Mrs. Fraser_ we relished being alone.  Standing inches apart and drinking deeply from sweating glass bottles of Coca-Cola, we fed each other cake in a surprisingly well-mannered way.

When Jamie went to wash the buttery confection from his hands, I moved to the center of the room and waited, fingers busying themselves in the lace overlay of my dress.

As he emerged from the washroom a line of electricity darted up from low in my belly, a crackling reminder of the fire there. It rolled up over my ribs and breasts, and into my throat.  

Something about his approach ––  _the first time he was going to touch me… like this… as my husband_ –– made me shiver.

“I don’t know how to get out of this dress,” I confessed.

“Mmm.” He leaned against the wall, arms folded over his chest.  He had long since discarded his coat and tie.  His shirt was undone down to the center of his chest.  “I’m no’ sure we need to remove it.”

_Oh God_.

“Turn.”

It took me a moment and a sucked in breath, but I turned.

“Slower.”

I did. Again.

By the time I was back facing him, he was on me with his hands and lips.  

“You married me today,” I said quite unnecessarily as his mouth attached to the soft spot just below my earlobe. The fact of _marriage_ was so foreign to me still and made my heart leap a little.

“Aye,” he responded simply.

In a trance, my fingers itched at the buckle holding his kilt on his hips.  I hiccupped a small, weak sheep-like bleating noise that made Jamie sigh a laugh. A touch nervous, a little tipsy, and a lot intoxicated ( _on him, this day_ ), I steadied my fingers in the hard arch of muscle below his navel. I scraped my fingers through the wiry hair, reminding myself that I had been with this man _over and over_.

His eyes widened as he pawed through layer after layer of fabric.  I laughed when he ducked his head beneath the skirt, breath warm on my thighs when he muttered, “Where in god’s name are ye under this?” ****

I felt him reach his target and fumbled to get a hold of the back of his head under the material. When he made his way back out from beneath the dress he held a nude lace thong in his fingers like a prize.

“What a good explorer,” I whispered, watching him discard the scrap of lace to the floor. He licked his lips as he stood.  Affixing his hand to the back of my neck, he kissed me.

In response, I pushed him back towards the bed.  “Lay down.”

He obliged, but not without some measure of sarcastic grunting. “My _new wife_ is in charge, then?”

“Well, if my _new husband_ is not up to the task of disrobing his new wife, then yes. I suppose that the new wife is.”

“Och. Horrid man, this new husband of yers, makin’ ye do all of the work.”

“The worst,” I breathed, losing my footing for the smallest of moments when he reached down and ran a lazy palm over his length.  Hand dropping back to the bed and propped up by his elbows, Jamie watched me ruck up tiers lace and silk organza in quite an unladylike fashion.  “He’s put on me a terrible burden, to be sure.”

When I actually settled on top of him, carefully resting my weight on his thighs, the mood shifted. His eyes darkened until stormy. I was desperate for him: the heavy curve of him against my belly, his thighs urging my legs further apart, the way his eyes stripped me bare.  He was reaching to slip under the skirt when I caught his hand, raising his arm to rest my lips on the small, healing pink line on his arm.  ****

_**Our**  blood was in my veins, his veins._

“ _Mille feuille_ ,” he breathed.

_Yes, a thousand leaves_.

We had been holding back during the wedding and the reception, waiting for alone time.  The moment carried us through congratulations and well wishes, the lovely dinner and first dance. But the roar now was undeniable: a hot, furious need that was no longer at a low simmer. It was boiling.

Jamie pawed with a quiet determination, pushing aside layer after layer, eyes narrowed and lips slightly parted. As he worked, I leaned forward and nibbled on his chin, his jaw, his ear.

He caught me off guard when he broke through the final layer separating us and positioned his fingers and thumb _just right_. It took me a moment to reorient myself to the new sensation.  ( _It was a stuttering, piercing, white light kind of moment, where everything tasted like copper and felt like an electrical current_.)  

With his hand working against me, I forgot to look beautiful –– like his _bride_.

Nearly coming undone, I created a new image for his brain to recall when he thought of our day. I needed the feel of him, the warm stretch as we moved against each other. I needed it more than I had ever needed anything.

“Now,” I mumbled, a little incoherently, my mouth a sucking, slack-jawed thing on his throat.

“Now?” he echoed, his hand tracing a damp trail over my thigh and repositioning himself.  One hand emerged from beneath the dress to tuck an errant curl behind my ear. _The tenderness of it, his default maneuver to make things right with the world, threatened to push my cognition over the edge._

_Now_ , I confirmed wordlessly as I sank down over him, the swish of material quiet as it settled in a plume around our joined bodies. I would have sworn that I felt the rush of chemicals in my head. Eyes studying me and turning my insides as blue as his irises, Jamie curled his fingers into my hip.  The dress was slippery between his fingers.  

There, in the candlelit hotel room, Jamie made love to me in that dress until we were left boneless and shivering.

I was standing on the shoulders of giants, seeing further into our future than I had ever believed possible.

Sometime later, the sensations fell away one by one. All I felt was a pounding in my chest and buzzing in my limbs. Voice firm, he said, “I was right this morning, by the way.”

“About what?” I whispered, turning my mouth to his wrist and kissing the thin whisper-thin layer of skin that separated my lips from his pulse.

“When I called ye. Ye’ve never looked lovelier than ye do today, this moment. Truly.”

 


End file.
